Calligraphy Under the Cover of Night: Conversations

Calligraphy Under the Cover of Night Of God you ask me? Oh jaan I thought you knew by now. Anarchy begins in the loins they say: I clamp palms in an unholy embrace with men sculpted from shattered mirrors and torn sheets of music. If gluttony is sin, then I guess I am going to Hell because I am shrouded by their veils of rolled back eyes, taut skin, and twisted fingers I have written psalms to the waves of his breath with my smeared mascara if God is your verse, then I sink into skin. Would you still want me then? You scribed psalms in the neon ink of mascara, a mascara of infinite sand his wavy breath trod upon, sand that like chamber music flows out of my hand, this room, and symphonic coronation. Or did you trace into the sand? The poetry of anarchy begins in the flower, some miles away from the beach. Flower: that intersection of lines, that could be you or me infinite variations on geometry called adam, hebrew for man, first man, add an ah of surprise for earth, dirt, almost dust before springtime, adama, be my knife and peel for monosyllabic blood dam, dom is silence, and when we stand still for the dead. Etymology’s poem forgot Eve in the beginning, left to evolutionary silence, until this eve: pick a nocturnal flower. Forgive me but a jungle bear is in no need of holy words folded into יברעמה לתוכה I watch you on your knees pilgrimage to an oasis called Jerusalem whispers whispers I watch your childhood bent over your Abba’s withering books. Fingers trace stories of people who read grains of sand and could tell you where to look for water. I could never draw your words in sand but I beg for answers instead: where are those verdant lands your God promised you? How could you believe when I am here sitting in dried weeds and burnt out cigarettes waiting for the words I love you to tumble from his lips didn’t your God create the world in six days? Six days: the days of a woman’s cycle my lips are sealed as I dream iron red dreams blood damned between thighs I have found your nocturnal flower tucked in the folds of my sister’s blanket. Tia Eva, yo llora para usted. Six days. And on the seventh he dreamed, if a god can dream: be buried under laughter and colors he’d never imagined. If gods can imagine. On the first day a grain of sand created God, who looked in the mirror—a grain of sand— and created all the other grains of sand. On the second day a grain of sand created God, who looked in the mirror—glass rubbed from sand— and created all the other grains of sand. On the third day... You ask where is the milk and honey, and the twinkle in my eye when I catch a springtime orchard, under quivering, revolutionary colors of peels? Arched within a sandy wind, somewhere, perhaps still in Egypt. Will you spend your afternoons pacing the Sahara in pursuit of Paradise? Wedding The anatomy of Paradise will reveal itself in echoes as passing thunders chart gods, the valley rewords the tambourines of women on their way, and women passing under the clean cloth of sky, corners upheld by four erect spines, from which flutter outward the white pages. woman veiled, man sings woman unveiled, shattered glass ribs reveal black ink below, adventurous. (and all that comes after) Now a window sees a garden, on the sill whistle outward pale pages called dove. ink nears, dove rises to the roof: the house a voice box in soprano.